Opera Reviews
The Lion's Face, Opera GroupMonday, 24 May 2010
An opera about Alzheimer’s disease might seem an idea calculated to send the most community-minded audience rapidly to the nearest exit. Yet there's a longish history of theatre – musical and otherwise – about loss of memory and the failure of language, from Wagner to Bartók to Beckett to (even) Michael Nyman; and if Elena Langer's new piece for The Opera Group, The Lion's Face, ultimately fails to measure up dramatically to that tradition, it may be because, in approaching the... Read more... |
Così Fan Tutte, Glyndebourne Festival OperaSunday, 23 May 2010
Cosi fan tutte’s arc of human experience is peculiarly effective when heard at Glyndebourne. With the mid-way picnic and wine in the setting sun, how much more aware are you of how easy it is as a day goes by to take leave of one’s senses and behave in a very silly way with serious consequences. Most seriously, to discover things about oneself that one did not want to know. Read more... |
Rusalka, Opera NorthSaturday, 22 May 2010
A thousand miles away from the Disney version, the transformation scene in Dvořák’s Rusalka is bleak and terrifying. With not a cauldron, bat or cobweb to be seen, the heroine is strapped to an operating table before imbibing the witch’s magic potion intravenously. Then her legs, until now swaddled together, are literally torn apart. It’s a brutal, shocking moment; no surprise that some audience members giggled nervously. Read more... |
Ottone in Villa, Barbican HallSaturday, 22 May 2010
A beloved regular of concert hall, radio and recording, the music of Vivaldi has more or less failed to find its way into the contemporary opera house. If we are to believe his own claims, the composer died with over 90 operas to his credit – double the output of even the extraordinarily prolific Handel – making the omission all the more striking. And suspicious. In... Read more... |
Billy Budd, Glyndebourne Festival OperaThursday, 20 May 2010
Silence. Near-darkness. Oozy weeds of orchestral strings twist in the mind of Edward Fairfax Vere (John Mark Ainsley), remembering the tragic events of 1797 when he was Captain of the HMS Indomitable. From that awe-inspiring start through to one of the most upsetting of onstage murders, perhaps the greatest parade of major and minor chords in all opera and beyond to some kind of redemption, Michael Grandage's Glyndebourne production - his first in the operatic sphere - of Britten's... Read more... |
Tosca, English National OperaTuesday, 18 May 2010
Rarely have I seen an opera where so much of the activity, so much of the detailed business of relating, loving, falling out and hating, has rung so true for so much of the time. And never do I remember this truthfulness coming from such simplicity. For, in terms of set, costume and conception, this is a very ordinary, recognisable, dependable, 19th-century Tosca. |
La Fille Du Régiment, Royal OperaMonday, 17 May 2010
You can take the girl out of the barracks but you can’t take the barracks out of the girl would be one way to sum up Donizetti’s La Fille du régiment (Daughter of the Regiment), which I can’t conceive could have a more ribtickling production, more brilliantly sung, than the delight that opened last night at Covent Garden. Kill, as they say, to get a ticket. It has Natalie Dessay, Juan Diego Flórez, Ann Murray and Dawn French, and in a starring supporting role comes one of the... Read more... |
After Life, BarbicanSunday, 16 May 2010
"We need to inform you officially. Mr Walter, you died yesterday. I’m sorry for your loss." It comes as no great surprise to learn that Michel van der Aa’s opera After Life is based on a Japanese film. The Borgesian hyper-real scenario, the no-place location and meditative pacing all point, or rather - rejecting anything so crass - bow respectfully to their original source.
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Juan Diego Florez, Barbican HallSaturday, 08 May 2010
Can we clear something up once and for all, please? Yet again this week an all too familiar headline caught my eye: “Is Juan Diego Florez the heir apparent to Pavarotti?” Or words to that effect. Why do these lazy (and/or ill-informed) editors and their headline writers keep asking the same rhetorical question? Surely they should know by now that the answer is a great big resounding “no”. Read more... |
Powder Her Face, RO, Linbury Studio TheatreThursday, 29 April 2010
Let's get straight to the fellatio, shall we. The blow job - and its Polaroid rendition - that led to the 1960s divorce trial of the dissolute Duchess of Argyll forms the centrepiece aria (an aria that "begins with words and ends with humming") in Thomas Adès's opera Powder Her Face. And how good we were: as silent as a row of...
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